View my complete profileMy name is Diane Shepard Johnson and my daughter Sarah and I have always loved old fashioned things. We find Tasha Tudor and Beatrix Potter so inspiring. Some of our favorite things and interests are: spinning, weaving, natural dyeing of fiber and yarn, knitting, bobbin lace making, vegetable, herb and flower gardening, old fashioned clothing and frocks, dolls, the old ways of preparing food, canning, corgyn, bunnies, goats, birds, photography, writing, drawing and painting, the old ways of living and old fashioned tasks.The Corgyncombe Courant is our newspaper of some of the highlights of life at Corgyncombe Cottage. Courant is an old term for newspaper.

December 31, 2009

Diane's Tasha Tudor Tin Kitchen!

Turkey Roasting, Wassail, and Gingerbread Cookies!

In the photograph at top are oranges, lemons, and cider for wassail.Above, the turkey is roasting in Diane's Tasha Tudor reproduction tin kitchen. Wassail is in the kettle hanging over the fire. Clove oranges can be seen floating in the wassail.

Christmas morn dawned with a thick lovely lacy frost about everything. The frost lasted all day and with the snow already on the ground it gave one the feeling of a perfect winter wonderland. In the afternoon my husband started a fire and we roasted a turkey on the spit of my new Tasha Tudor reproduction tin kitchen. I put a kettle of wassail on the tripod over the fire and whilst tending the fire and the turkey, we enjoyed delicious wassail (non alcoholic). Some of the frost started coming down from the trees and it was snowing lovely frost. The creek could be heard cheerfully babbling and the smell of the turkey roasting was a delight to the senses! Later, I put a kettle of potatoes on the tripod over the fire to cook. The turkey was delicious!!!

Roasting the turkey before the daylight went over the hill.

I used to teach open hearth cooking at a museum and for years I have been looking for a tin kitchen. When I saw Tasha Tudor's I hoped that I could find one similar to hers as I liked the design of her tin kitchen. Recently I saw that Tasha Tudor and Family were selling reproductions of Tasha Tudor's tin kitchen and needless to say I was thrilled! I just love this tin kitchen and I am so grateful to Amy, Natalie, and Tasha Tudor and Family for seeing to it that I got the tin kitchen by Christmas!

Amelia and Diane are looking forward to St. Distaff's Day in January, a traditional day in the old days, when the spinners resumed their spinning after the Christmastide festivities.

I used to work at a museum before I was married. My dear friends at the museum had a bridal shower for me . Each of the people from each building, such as the farmhouse, schoolhouse, store, blacksmith shop, apothecary, lawyer's office, and printer's office, gave me special gifts with special meaning pertaining to their building. The ladies that I worked with at the farmhouse gave me a box with a gingerbread family cookie cutters and a receipt written out for gingerbread cookies. Someday I will do an article for The Corgyncombe Courant on the other delightful surprises from all of the other buildings. What a fun shower!

These gingerbread cookies taste so good and are delicious with Tasha Tudor's Welsh Breakfast Tea!

Inspired by Tasha Tudor andBeatrix Potter and Corgyncombe's goats, corgyn, bunnies, and mice, Sarah cut out the above gingerbread cookies freehand without cookie cutters. At top left is a Corgi in a frock, Beatrix Potter's Anna Maria the Rat, a Nubian goat, at bottom left is a Corgi, Corgyncombe's Tillie Tinkham the Mouse, and Beatrix Flopsy Bunny.

Frosting for the gingerbread cookies made from the receipt in "Take Joy! The Tasha Tudor Christmas Book".

Diane made this special little bell cookie and decorated it like Bellinda in the story from the newspaper. Doesn't she look like she is looking down and singing "ding-a-dong-a-ling-a-dong in her silvery tinkle-tones"?

Diane keeps some of her cookie cutters in this small picnic basket.

The mice under the floor boards under the Christmas tree, are dancing around their own Christmas tree.The big Christmas tree in the parlour was from a previous year.

The last Corgyncombe Full Moon of the decade 2000 to 2009.A cloudy, snowy moon.